Cameron, James

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    A.I. Made These Movies Sharper. Critics Say It Ruined Them.

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    Machine-learning technologies are being used in film restoration for new home video releases. But some viewers strongly dislike the results.In 1998, Geoff Burdick, an executive at James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, was hunched in front of a 12-inch monitor at a postproduction house, carefully preparing “Titanic” for release on LaserDisc and VHS. A state-of-the-art computer process had made it possible for Burdick and his team to scour the film frame by frame, removing tiny imperfections embedded in the original negative: little scratches, flakes of dirt, even water stains that smeared the image. The computer could erase these blemishes using a kind of copy-paste tool, concealing the defects with information from another frame.Burdick, now a senior vice president at the company, told me that this process “seemed like freaking magic at the time.” And yet the results were not entirely well-received. “There were a lot of people who said that this was the most beautiful VHS they’d ever seen in their life, because we’d gotten rid of all that gobbledygook,” he recalled. “But there were a lot of folks who said, ‘This is not right! You’ve removed all of this stuff! If the negative is scratched, then we should see that scratch.’ People were really hard-core about it.”In the decades since, home video formats have reached higher and higher resolutions, with VHS and LaserDisc giving way to DVD and Blu-ray, and eventually to ultra high-definition 4K discs, known as Ultra HD Blu-rays. As the picture quality has improved, restoration tools have evolved with them, making it easier than ever for filmmakers to fine-tune their work using computers. Several of Cameron’s films, including “The Abyss,” “True Lies” and “Aliens,” were recently released on Ultra HD Blu-ray in newly restored versions that are clearer and sharper than ever before — the product of painstaking attention from Lightstorm and Cameron himself. “I think they look the best they’ve ever looked,” Burdick said.Bill Paxton with Schwarzenegger in the film’s streaming version, top, and the Blu-ray version. Details in the background and colors in the foreground are clearer in the new take.20th Century FoxBut as with the old “Titanic” home video, these restorations have proved controversial, with many viewers objecting strenuously to their pristine new look. What has caught the particular ire of critics is the fact that these versions have been restored, in part, using artificial intelligence. Park Road Post Production, the New Zealand company owned by the filmmaker Peter Jackson, helped clean up Cameron’s films using some of the same proprietary machine-learning software used on Jackson’s documentaries “The Beatles: Get Back” and “They Shall Not Grow Old.” The images in Cameron’s classic blockbusters were refined in a way that many felt looked strange and unnatural.The level of detail is eye-popping. Water looks crystalline; colors are bright and vivid, while blacks are deep and inky. Some surfaces, however, do look a little glossy, with a buffed sheen that appears almost lacquered. It can be hard to pinpoint what is changed. But there does seem to be a difference, and depending on the viewer, it can feel slightly uncanny.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Home Alone,’ ‘Fame,’ and Apollo 13’ Join National Film Registry

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      These movies, along with “Bamboozled” and “Home Alone,” are among 25 selected by the Librarian of Congress.It was a year for the underdogs.Two films that initially received mixed receptions but that later came to be considered groundbreaking in their own way — Spike Lee’s satire of blackface in cinema, “Bamboozled” (2000), and Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated Disney musical “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) — are among the motion pictures that have been selected for preservation this year in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.Also being added are “Apollo 13” (1995), the Ron Howard space drama about the quest to save American astronauts after the failed 1970 lunar landing, and “Twelve Years a Slave” (2013), the Steve McQueen-helmed narrative that won three Academy Awards, including best picture.The library on Wednesday announced all 25 films, dating from 1921 to 2013, that are being honored this year for their historical, cultural or aesthetic significance. Movies are chosen by the Librarian of Congress, in consultation with other experts.The library also allows the public to make nominations at its website, and this year people nominated more than 6,800 films. Titles that were among the most submitted, and that have now been added to the list, include Chris Columbus’s holiday comedy “Home Alone” (1990), which vaulted Macaulay Culkin to stardom as a plucky youngster who uses his creativity to foil two bungling burglars; and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), the James Cameron sci-fi sequel that became a landmark study in the use of CGI special effects.Two documentaries selected concern battles for representation. The Oscar-winning “Helen Keller in Her Story” (1954), by Nancy Hamilton, follows its subject, who was deaf and blind, from her childhood frustration to global success as an author, lecturer and activist for the rights of women and disabled people. “We’re Alive” (1974) chronicles six months of roundtables at the California Institution for Women that drew attention to inhumane prison conditions. The conversations were led by three U.C.L.A. graduate students, Michie Gleason, Christine Lesiak and Kathy Levitt.The experiences of Asian Americans are also centered in several new selections: “Cruisin’ J-Town” (1975), Duane Kubo’s documentary about jazz musicians in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo; the Bohulano Family home movies about a Filipino American community in Stockton, Calif. from the 1950s through the 1970s; and “Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision” (1994), Freida Lee Mock’s Oscar-winning documentary about the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall.Three films that experimented with new forms and techniques were also selected: “The Lighted Field” (1987), Andrew Noren’s silent avant-garde masterwork that traffics in sensual shadow-play; “Queen of Diamonds” (1991), a drama by Nina Menkes, filmed in Las Vegas, that contrasts the noise and neon of the city with the quiet, lonely lives of its residents; and “The Lady and the Tramp” (1955), the Disney animated romance between a spoiled cocker spaniel and a mutt, which was praised for its fuller character development and distinguished by its use of a wide-screen CinemaScope format.The lineup also recognizes the debut features of several award-winning filmmakers: Martin Ritt’s noir drama “Edge of the City” (1957), which stars Sidney Poitier as a dockworker whose friendship with a white co-worker (John Cassavetes) aggravates a racist union leader; Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “Love & Basketball” (2000), a romantic sports drama that follows a boy and girl as they pursue basketball careers from childhood; and “¡Alambrista!” (1977), a small-budget film by Robert Young — often shot with a shaky, hand-held camera — that follows a farmer who enters the United States from Mexico undocumented, seeking work to support his family, which incorporates elements of guerrilla and activist filmmaking.Finally, New Yorkers — or those who love New York — will find a lot to like on the list this year: Choices for a Manhattan-set adventure include “Fame” (1980), Alan Parker’s teen musical drama about the High School of Performing Arts; “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985), Susan Seidelman’s wackball of a film that follows an unhappy New Jersey housewife (Rosanna Arquette) down a rabbit hole of personal ads and mistaken identity; and “The Wedding Banquet” (1993), Ang Lee’s comedy about a gay Taiwanese man in New York who marries a Chinese woman to appease his parents back home (high jinks ensue when they decide to pay the “couple” a visit).The Library of Congress said in a statement that these additions bring to 875 the number of titles on the registry created to preserve the nation’s film heritage.” Eligible movies must be at least 10 years old. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, made the choices after consulting with members of the National Film Preservation Board and others. Some registry films are also available online in the National Screening Room.A television special, featuring several of these titles and a conversation between Hayden and Jacqueline Stewart, the film historian who directs the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, will be shown Dec. 14 on TCM.Below are the 25 new additions to the National Film Registry:1. “A Movie Trip Through Filmland” (1921)2. “Dinner at Eight” (1933)3. Bohulano Family film collection (1950s-70s)4. “Helen Keller in Her Story” (1954)5. “Lady and the Tramp” (1955)6. “Edge of the City” (1957)7. “We’re Alive” (1974)8. “Cruisin’ J-Town” (1975)9. “¡Alambrista!” (1977)10. “Passing Through” (1977)11. “Fame” (1980)12. “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985)13. “The Lighted Field” (1987)14. “Matewan” (1987)15. “Home Alone” (1990)16. “Queen of Diamonds” (1991)17. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)18. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993)19. “The Wedding Banquet” (1993)20. “Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision” (1994)21. “Apollo 13” (1995)22. “Bamboozled” (2000)23. “Love & Basketball” (2000)24. “Twelve Years a Slave” (2013)25. “20 Feet From Stardom” (2013) More

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      What James Cameron Wants to Bring Up From the Titanic

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      Preservationists such as Robert D. Ballard have long clashed with salvors such as Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who died in June on the Titan submersible. Is a third way possible?Ocean experts have long clashed over whether artifacts from the world’s most famous shipwreck should be retrieved for exhibits that could help people better understand the Titanic tragedy or whether they should be left untouched in the sea’s depths as a monument to the more than 1,500 people who lost their lives. James Cameron, known for his 1997 movie “Titanic,” sees himself as negotiating a middle path through this complicated and often emotional dispute.Mr. Cameron dove 33 times to the shipwreck from 1995 through 2005, giving him a window on its condition and likely fate. His perspective is timely because the United States government recently sought to exert control over the wreck, raising questions about whether a company that has recovered more than 5,500 artifacts will be allowed to gather more.Mr. Cameron’s views are also deeply personal. He often debated the retrievals with Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French submariner who died in June while descending to the shipwreck in the Titan submersible. Mr. Nargeolet also directed underwater research for RMS Titanic Inc., the company that holds the exclusive salvage rights to the ship and its artifacts.Mr. Cameron recently answered questions by email from The New York Times about his recovery views, the Titanic’s future and the Titan submersible. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.Did you see signs of natural decay during your 10 years of Titanic dives?We’ve seen significant deterioration to thin-walled structures such as the deckhouse (the uppermost deck above the boat deck) and the forward mast. It was intact (in its fallen position) in 2001 but partially collapsed in 2005. New imaging by the Magellan company in 2022 shows that it has completely collapsed and broken open.However, we’ve not seen any significant deterioration to the vast majority of the wreck, such as the hull plates. Their steel is one and a half inches thick. I believe the plates will still be standing for another two centuries at least.How about damage by visitors? Anything obvious?Based on my experience maneuvering around the wreck, and landing on top of it, the submersibles do nothing of significance. Up top, a submersible weighs several tons but down there, in order to fly around, it must be neutrally buoyant, which means it touches down with only a few pounds of force. Besides, anything humans do is trivial compared to the relentless deterioration caused by biological activity, which goes on year after year. The Titanic is being eaten by living colonies of bacteria. They love it when humans drop giant piles of steel into the deep ocean, which we do with some regularity, especially in wars. It’s a feast for them.A still from the 2003 documentary, “Ghosts of the Abyss,” directed by Mr. Cameron, during a visit to the Titanic wreckage.Walt Disney Pictures/AJ Pics, via AlamyOn the Titanic’s artifacts, you describe yourself as a centrist between preservationists such as Robert D. Ballard and salvors such as Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who died in June on the Titan submersible. How so?On one hand, I think it’s good to recover artifacts from the debris field. When Titanic broke in two at the surface, it became like two great piñatas. Over square miles, we see plates and wine bottles, suitcases, shoes — things people carried with them, touched and wore.That humanizes the story and reminds us that the tragedy has a human face. So many artifacts have been recovered that poignantly connect us to this history — like the bell from the crow’s nest which was rung three times by lookout Frederick Fleet when he first spotted the iceberg. Now, millions of museumgoers can see it with their own eyes. I’ve even rung it myself. And there are so many examples of Titanic’s elegance — fine china, beaded chandeliers, the cherub statue from the Grand Staircase. It’s the ongoing public interest in these things that keeps the history alive, now, 111 years after the sinking. A gray area that leaves me torn is whether we should recover artifacts from inside the bow and stern sections. One case I find compelling is recovery of the Marconi set. This wireless system sent the SOS signal that brought the rescue ship Carpathia to Titanic’s exact coordinates, and arguably saved the lives of over 700 people.The Titanic’s wireless set was unique, very different from others in its day. I’ve flown my tiny remotely operated vehicles inside to survey the Marconi rooms, so we know where everything is and have done computer reconstructions.But to actually put that instrument on public display would be very moving for millions of museumgoers. If it could be recovered without any harm done to the outer appearance of the wreck, I’d be in favor, because that area of the ship is deteriorating fast and within a few years the Marconi set will be buried deep inside the ruins, unrecoverable.So anything goes?Where I personally draw the line is changing the look of the wreck — such as raising its iconic bow (where Jack and Rose stood in the movie) or removing the mighty anchors or taking the bronze telemotor from the bridge where Quartermaster Hitchens desperately spun the ship’s wheel trying to avoid the iceberg. All these recoveries have been discussed by somebody at some point over the last quarter century. I think we shouldn’t take anything from the bow and stern sections that would disfigure them. They should stand as monuments to the tragedy.Paul-Henri Nargeolet, the French submariner who died in June while descending to the Titanic shipwreck in a submersible, at a Titanic exhibition in Paris in 2013.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesYou knew Mr. Nargeolet quite well. Did you have any disagreements with him and his company’s approach to artifact recovery?He was a legendary sub pilot and explorer, and we spent many exciting hours going over our Titanic videos and comparing notes. He recovered many of the artifacts, such as the crow’s nest bell, that I find so moving in the various exhibits around the world.That said, I disagreed with him about some of his plans to recover such things as the bow anchors, though it was always a friendly discussion. I’m glad some of those plans never came to fruition.Around 2017, you joined with Dr. Ballard and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, in an unsuccessful attempt to buy the collection of Titanic artifacts and move them to Belfast, where the ship was built. Why? And would you try again if RMS Titanic once again declared bankruptcy?Our concern at the time was that the collection could have been bought by a rich private collector and disappear from the public’s view. These artifacts belong to the world, as part of our shared cultural heritage — our collective history — and the artifacts help keep that history alive and the tragedy palpable. But only if they can be seen, and emotionally felt, through public access. If the collection is put at risk again, down the line, I would hope to have a voice in keeping it publicly accessible.What do you make of the federal government’s recent effort to exert control over the Titanic?The Titanic lies in international waters. I’m sure this tussle will go on indefinitely.Do you think the Titan disaster will have an impact on Titanic visitors?Do I believe it will stop people from wanting to witness Titanic in person? Absolutely not. Human curiosity is a powerful force, and the urge to go and bear witness with one’s own eyes is very strong for some people, myself included.But citizen explorers must be more discerning about who they dive with. Is the sub fully certified by a recognized bureau? What is the safe operating record of the submersible company? These are the kinds of questions they need to ask.Would you dive again?I would get in a sub tomorrow — if it was certified, like Woods Hole Oceanographic’s storied Alvin sub, or the subs built by Triton submersibles. But there’s no rush to do anything. That familiar image of the bow will still be there, as it is, for another half century at least. More

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      ‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Points to Flaws in Titan Sub’s Design

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      “We’ve never had an accident like this,” James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday.Mr. Cameron, an expert in submersibles, has dived dozens of times to the ship’s deteriorating hulk and once plunged in a tiny craft of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess.In an interview, Mr. Cameron called the presumed loss of five lives aboard the Titan submersible from the company OceanGate like nothing anyone involved in private ocean exploration had ever seen.“There’ve never been fatalities at this kind of depth and certainly no implosions,” he said.An implosion in the deep sea happens when the crushing pressures of the abyss cause a hollow object to collapse violently inward. If the object is big enough to hold five people, Mr. Cameron said in an interview, “it’s going to be an extremely violent event — like 10 cases of dynamite going off.”In 2012, Mr. Cameron designed and piloted an experimental submersible into a region in the Pacific Ocean called the Challenger Deep. Mr. Cameron had not sought certification of the vessel’s safety by organizations in the maritime industry that provide such services to numerous companies.“We did that knowingly” because the craft was experimental and its mission scientific, Mr. Cameron said. “I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified.”Mr. Cameron strongly criticized Stockton Rush, the OceanGate chief executive who piloted the submersible when it disappeared Sunday, for never getting his tourist submersible certified as safe. He noted that Mr. Rush called certification an impediment to innovation.“I agree in principle,” Mr. Cameron said. “But you can’t take that stance when you’re putting paying customers into your submersible — when you have innocent guests who trust you and your statements” about vehicle safety.As a design weakness in the Titan submersible and a possible cautionary sign to its passengers, Mr. Cameron cited its construction with carbon-fiber composites. The materials are used widely in the aerospace industry because they weigh much less than steel or aluminum, yet pound for pound are stronger and stiffer.The problem, Mr. Cameron said, is that a carbon-fiber composite has “no strength in compression”— which happens as an undersea vehicle plunges ever deeper into the abyss and faces soaring increases in water pressure. “It’s not what it’s designed for.”The company, he added, used sensors in the hull of the Titan to assess the status of the carbon-fiber composite hull. In its promotional material, OceanGate pointed to the sensors as an innovative feature for “hull health monitoring.” Early this year, an academic expert described the system as providing the pilot “with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”In contrast to the company, Mr. Cameron called it “a warning system” to let the submersible’s pilot know if “the hull is getting ready to implode.”Mr. Cameron said the sensor network on the sub’s hull was an inadequate solution to a design he saw as intrinsically flawed.“It’s not like a light coming on when the oil in your car is low,” he said of the network of hull sensors. “This is different.” More

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      ‘Avatar’ and the Mystery of the Vanishing Blockbuster

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      First it was said that James Cameron was no match for reality. In late 2009, before “Avatar” came out, skeptics warned that the visual-effects behemoth would never recoup its unearthly budget, estimated to be upward of $237 million. In just over two weeks, it grossed $1 billion, quieting doubters, at least temporarily. After that, the story reversed: Reality was no match for “Avatar.” The condition went by different names: “Avatar” Syndrome, Post-Pandoran Depression or PADS (Post-“Avatar” Depression Syndrome). It was marked by despair and suicidal ideation, brought on by the insurmountable gap between real life and Cameron’s C.G.I. Eden.This was at the dawn of the era when a small group of people acting weird online could set off a dayslong cycle of news. Here, the source was a multipage thread on the independent fan site Avatar Forums — “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible.” By that point, January 2010, even certain well-adjusted people had seen the movie two or three times, lured back to theaters by the all-consuming tale of an ex-Marine fighting to save the Na’vi race from the venal designs of a mining corporation. For the people posting on the thread, watching was not enough; they wanted to live inside Cameron’s world, to fly through Pandora as a 10-foot-tall blue alien, in perfect symbiosis with nature. One of the afflicted, Ivar Hill, told CNN, “I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world.”Hill was 17 at the time, living with his parents in Borås, Sweden. He first saw “Avatar” at the local cinema and woke up the next day feeling empty and lost. On Avatar Forums, he found others who felt trapped, who yearned for a chance to start over on Pandora or dreamed of leading a Na’vi lifestyle here on earth. Some of them recognized the futility of the sentiment. Others went searching for a feeling of escape, seeing the movie again and again and brainstorming tips for improving their own lives. “Start living like Neytiri,” one wrote, “in touch with nature, the environment, and not being greedy and wasteful.” Hill belonged to the second group. He started reading philosophy. He devoted more time to communing with nature. “I would go out into the woods and spend time there hiking,” he says. “ ‘Avatar’ made me feel like I could sit out in a forest and just be.”Though the first ‘Avatar’ was the world’s top-grossing movie, its most oft-cited claim to fame is its surprising lack of cultural impact.Hill saw “Avatar” four times, once even traveling an hour to Gothenburg, at the time the nearest city with a 3-D-equipped theater. Eventually, with two friends he met online, he started his own fan forum, Tree of Souls, named for the holy site where the Na’vi go to experience the interconnectedness of all things. In the chat room, he met a woman named Heather, who had also experienced post-“Avatar” depression. After messaging about the film, they moved on to more metaphysical concerns. “Neither of us was the kind of person who had ever been looking for a partner,” he says. “But a few weeks after we first started talking, we kind of realized, ‘Huh, we’re feeling something here.’” In 2012, the pair met for the first time at an in-person “Avatar” event in Seattle. Two years later, they were married in Sweden. The couple now live in the Pacific Northwest, where Hill, who became an American citizen last year, works as a video-game developer. “My life would be very, very different if I hadn’t randomly ended up seeing that film in 2010,” he says.Hill still operates Tree of Souls, one of the few surviving “Avatar” fan forums. The site today is mostly speculation about “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the first in a series of four long-delayed sequels that will transform “Avatar” into a franchise. “The Way of Water,” which was shot simultaneously with a yet-to-be-titled third film (and part of a fourth), arrives in theaters Dec. 16. When asked about his plans for the premiere, Hill was nonchalant. Though “Avatar” altered the course of his whole life — arguably more than even James Cameron’s — he doesn’t really think there’s anything that special about the movie. It was just the thing that happened to cross his path at the moment when he was already searching. “Maybe if it wasn’t ‘Avatar,’ something else would have come along,” Hill says. He thinks of the sequel as just another movie. “It’s going to be really interesting to see, but it’s not like I’m counting down the days.”Of all the questions raised by “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the most pressing seems to be: “Who asked for this?” Though the first “Avatar” was the world’s top-grossing movie not once, but twice, reclaiming the title from “Avengers: Endgame” after a 2021 rerelease in China, its most oft-cited claim to fame is its surprising lack of cultural impact. While films of similar scale and ambition — “Star Wars,” “Jurassic Park,” “Iron Man” — have spawned fandoms and quotable lines and shareable memes and licensed merchandise, “Avatar” has spawned mainly punch lines. On the fifth anniversary of the film, Forbes announced, “Five Years Ago, ‘Avatar’ Grossed $2.7 Billion but Left No Pop Culture Footprint.” A few years later, Buzzfeed ran a quiz titled, “Do You Remember Anything at All About ‘Avatar’?” challenging readers to answer basic questions like, “What is the name of the male lead character in ‘Avatar’?” and “Which of these actors played the male lead?”Even if you cannot answer these questions, chances are high you have seen “Avatar.” (According to a study by the consumer-research firm MRI-Simmons, an estimated one in five American adults saw it in theaters.) To jog your memory, a quick rundown of the plot: The year is 2154. Earth, as you might expect, is a husk. Four light-years away on an inhabited moon called Pandora, an outfit called the Resources Development Administration extracts a mineral called unobtanium. This is not an in-and-out mission. The air on Pandora is toxic to human lungs and mining operations are resisted by the Na’vi, an Indigenous group that lives off the land and is rightly distrustful of “the Sky People.” To learn the Na’vi mind and protect its own investments, the R.D.A. funds a side project called the Avatar Program, in which scientists create Na’vi clones that can be piloted by humans. Each of these “avatars” is matched to a single researcher’s DNA. When one researcher dies before his avatar is fully formed, his twin brother is tapped to take over his role. Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, is a paraplegic ex-Marine. In this avatar body, he discovers a new freedom. What follows is basically what you would expect: Guy goes native, has a change of heart, saves the local race from his own kind.“Avatar” was first mentioned in the press in 1996. Before a single frame was shot, the film was foretold as a kind of prophecy. A headline in The Tampa Bay Times announced, “Synthetic Actors to Star in ‘Avatar.’” At that point, motion-capture was practically science fiction, and C.G.I. had mainly been used to render nonhuman creatures or effects (the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park,” for example). Cameron was promising a marriage of the two that would produce lifelike humanoids. He would soon find out that the technology was not there yet. After “Titanic” in 1997, “Avatar” was set aside as Cameron began to work out the technological kinks. In the meantime, he produced an academically disreputable documentary about the lost tomb of Jesus. He designed and built a submarine and then piloted it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.Work on “Avatar” officially began in 2005. Cameron contracted a linguistics consultant at the University of Southern California to begin development on Na’vi — a lexicon of more than 2,800 words, drawing on the rarest structures of human language. From there, the anecdotes only got more insane: a team of botanists advising on imaginary flora; a bespoke head rig to record facial expressions; a motion-capture stage in Howard Hughes’s airplane hangar, six times larger than any seen before. Each new detail fed a tornado of hype, a low-pressure system of buzz so rapacious that it grew to encompass everything from the film’s tech — a 3-D camera system, invented by Cameron, which could mimic the spread between the human eyes — to its budget, estimates of which ranged from $237 million to $500 million. (No one could agree exactly when to start the meter — on the first day of production? With Cameron’s R.& D.? On the day of his birth?) One line that Cameron trotted around town was that watching “Avatar” would be like “dreaming with your eyes wide open.” An article in this newspaper skewered the hype: “James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that may: a) Change filmmaking forever, b) Alter your brain, c) Cure cancer.”The Return of ‘Avatar’The director James Cameron takes us back to the world of Pandora for the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water.”What to Know: The sequel opens on Dec. 16, 13 years after “Avatar” shattered box office records. If you remember little about the original movie, here is a refresher.Holding Their Breath: Cameron and the sequel’s cast discussed what it took to get the new “Avatar” made and to bring it to life in a changed world.Sigourney Weaver: Hollywood has never quite known what to do with the actress, who has four films out this season, including the “Avatar” sequel. She spoke to us about her unusually fluid career.Back to the Theater: To help reacquaint audiences with the 3-D filmmaking that dazzled audiences in 2009, the first movie was rereleased in theaters on Sept. 23.“Avatar” premiered on Dec. 18, 2009, at No. 1, bringing in a respectable, if not astounding, $73 million. Celebrities logged on to newly ascendant Twitter to spread the word (Michael Moore), announce their plans to see it on peyote (John Mayer) or lament their sad fate to not bed a Na’vi (Rainn Wilson). The Los Angeles Times suggested that the film had done for 3-D technology what “The Jazz Singer” did for sound. By the first week of January, “Avatar” surpassed $1 billion, setting a record for reaching that milestone. By the end of the month, it was the first movie to ever gross $2 billion. In China, a quartz-sandstone pillar in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park was renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain. In Palestine, people put on blueface to protest an Israeli separation barrier. Oscar nominations flooded in, along with a wave of “Avatar” porn, suggesting a strong libidinal undercurrent to the hype. In April 2010, when two sequels were announced, it came as no surprise to anyone.These sequels would be repeatedly delayed, reportedly on account of: two sequels expanding into three (2013); delays in script delivery (2015); three sequels ballooning to four (2016); the epicness of this quadripartite undertaking, which Cameron at one point likened to “building the Three Gorges Dam” (2017); Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, which demanded a shake-up in the rollout strategy, to better harmonize with the “Star Wars” release schedule (Disney, by then, also owned Lucasfilm) (2019); and finally, the novel coronavirus (2020). (Disney disputed some of these accounts but declined to directly address the cause of the delays.) Over this 13-year period, the entertainment industry underwent a transformational shift, the beginning of which almost exactly coincided with the moment that “Avatar” was released. In 2008, “Iron Man” came out, the first of the 30 (and counting) movies that today make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As “Avatar” promised one future for film — ​original world building, envelope-​pushing effects, the theater as the site of cinematic innovation — Marvel, and other endeavors that would follow, went on to develop a very different one.Illustration by Kristian HammerstadIn this vision, any given movie was merely one installment in a more complex cultural product called the franchise. The on-again-off-again Disney chief executive Bob Iger defined the franchise as “something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time.” A franchise is an ecosystem oriented toward an infinite horizon, in which a common set of characters and stories are constantly refreshed and reworked across platforms. From 2008 to today, entertainment brands, old and new, turned themselves over to the new model. “Harry Potter” turned seven books and eight movies into three spinoff movies, more than 30 video games, a Broadway show, five theme-park worlds, an interactive website and more; “Star Wars” turned the original trilogy into the nine-film “Skywalker Saga” plus two more stand-alone films, an animated movie, nearly 20 TV shows, action figures, trading cards, a hotel — the list goes on.According to data from Franchise Entertainment Research, in 2019, franchise movies made up 42 percent of Hollywood’s new wide releases and accounted for 83 percent of global box-office proceeds. The ascent of this networked form of entertainment has had far-reaching cultural effects on everything from the tone and plot structure of movies, to what it means to be a fan, to how we calculate success. If “Avatar” feels irrelevant today, it has less to do with the film itself and more to do with how the world has changed around it.After the success of “Avatar,” there were naturally some attempts to expand the brand under the franchise model that was emerging. Even when these brand extensions were thoughtful, few could withstand the long wait for the sequel. A novelization by the science-fiction author Steven Charles Gould was announced in 2013 but hasn’t yet materialized. “Avatar: The Game,” which was set before the events of the film, sold decently, but by 2014, its servers were shut down. Even the Mattel toys had problems: The Na’vi figures were produced at the wrong scale; the lack of young children’s toys overlooked future audiences. Those who might have shelled out for collectibles might not have been eager to do so for the articulated figurine of an R.D.A. bureaucrat, played by Giovanni Ribisi, putting a golf ball.In July, when I first started working on this article, a search on Amazon for “Avatar” returned only products for “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” an unrelated franchise owned by Nickelodeon. Today just one major vestige of the fandom still survives, Pandora: World of “Avatar,” a detailed 12-acre simulacrum rising from the flatlands of Orlando, Fla. The theme park offers the most fleshed-out look at how “Avatar” might remake itself in the age of the franchise.Pandora is inside Disney’s Animal Kingdom, an attraction that combines the pious conservationism of a zoo with the wacky extremity of a carnival. When it opened in 2017, about halfway through the sequel delays, it was widely regarded as Disney’s response to Universal Studios’ Wizarding World of “Harry Potter.” Wizarding World is all-encompassing, inviting its guests to live as Potter does, down to even mundane tasks like exchanging Muggle currency for galleons. With Pandora, Disney aimed to raise the bar, promising not just a world but an entire alien world to explore.Pandora is one of five “lands” within Animal Kingdom, the other four being “Africa,” “Asia,” “Discovery Island” and “DinoLand U.S.A.” In the spatial arrangement of this taxonomic nightmare, Pandora is in the southwest of the park, on a plot of land rumored to have originally been reserved for a never-built zoo of mythical beasts. The first thing I saw upon landing on the planet was a signpost offering a welcome in Na’vi: “OEL NGATI KAMEIE (I See You).” As fodder for an immersive theme-park experience, the plot of “Avatar” presents certain challenges, namely regarding the role of the immersed in light of the fact that the movie concludes with the Na’vi’s kicking major human ass and banishing their colonizers back to earth. To square the race-war thing with the hordes of human guests, the park is set more than a generation after the first movie, following a yet-to-be-cinematically-​depicted armistice. The sign cleared this up with some slapdash world building, introducing the “Pandora Conservation Initiative,” a joint venture between “the indigenous Na’vi people” and an Earth-based venture called Alpha Centauri Expeditions. In other words, we were tourists playing tourists.Like many postcolonial people, the Na’vi now support themselves by selling a version of their culture to outsiders. On Pandora, there are three major attractions: Flight of Passage, a 3-D-simulator ride; an “It’s a Small World”-style boat tour called Na’vi River Journey; and a scale replica of the Valley of Mo’ara, the massive floating mountain range that Neytiri, Jake Sully’s love interest, calls home. (The range didn’t have a name until after the park was built.) As I entered the park, these mountains loomed above me, held aloft by steel supports disguised to look like mossy vines. The pristine green of this false Amazon was interrupted only by the teals and magentas of plastic sprayer fans and sun-protective T-shirts and quick-dry bucket hats. Families all around posed for photos. Most of the children, I guessed, were not yet born at the time the first “Avatar” was released.According to Derek Johnson, a professor of media studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “Media Franchising,” one major feature of a franchise versus a movie is not just its multiple sites of production — the theme park, the toy, the television show — but also its orientation toward the future. In order to survive, it must maintain a careful balance between novelty and familiarity, courting the next generation of fans without driving away too many of the old ones. By now, there are certain canonical tactics that work in service of this overarching goal: The prequel invites a new generation into an old saga. The reboot refreshes the father’s intellectual property to win the pocket change of the son. The spinoff inducts a new demographic, centering a side character (often a person of color or a woman). In between, a fandom is maintained through intermittent product tie-ins and announcements.Today it has been thoroughly demonstrated that superhero and fantasy movies are the best forms of intellectual property for the endless reiteration necessitated by the franchise model. But it was not always self-evident that they would come to dominate. In the years surrounding “Avatar,” executives were still experimenting with adapting different types of source material: the young-adult novel (“Twilight”), the theme-park ride (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), the board game (“Battleship”), the casual-​gaming app (“The Angry Birds Movie”) and even the Unicode pictogram keyboard (“The Emoji Movie”). The most successful franchises share certain principles: an epic plot, on the scale of all mankind, sweeping enough to encompass different stories; a detailed setting, with high specificity, implying a world beyond what gets shown onscreen; assorted sects and institutions, providing easy points of fan identification; a set of distinctive totems to merchandise — a scarf, a shield, a mask, a ring. One challenge facing Pandora: World of “Avatar” is the relative thinness of the actual world of “Avatar”: The movie offers few clues about Pandoran life beyond just what is shown onscreen.This was evident at the Satu’li Canteen, an air-conditioned fast-casual concession housed in a reclaimed R.D.A. mess hall. In “Avatar,” the Na’vi eat something called Spartan fruit, which grows from the fictional kuchenium polyphyllum. Short of bioengineering a new species, park designers were left to fill in the gaps for what a restaurant on Pandora might serve. This prompt was made even more challenging by a mandate that the food appear alien, while also looking and tasting familiar — or, in the words of one Imagineer, “like chicken” — enough to satisfy the average Disney visitor.The menu that day offered strange-but-​recognizable delicacies: “steamed pods” (beef bao buns), “teylu” (hot dogs wrapped in dough) and “ber’ri” (blueberry cream-cheese mousse). I ordered the crispy fried tofu bowl, which arrived topped with bright orange, fruit-flavored boba. Pandoran appeared to be a fusion cuisine: local ingredients mixed with the traditional lunch fare of Midtown. After lunch, I went outside for a drink at Pongu Pongu. On tap was a Pandoran craft beer called Mo’ara High Country Ale. I ordered the Night Blossom, a nonalcoholic slushie, presumably conceived as Pandora’s answer to Butterbeer at the Wizarding World of “Harry Potter” — a soft drink so delicious and successful it sold one million units in six months, substantially offsetting the cost of the park. Night Blossom tasted the way your teeth feel after eating a Jolly Rancher. Suffice to say, it would not be paying for Pandora. As I took three sips and threw it in the trash, I struggled to picture a Na’vi onscreen sucking one down under the Tree of Souls.After lunch, I downloaded an app and scheduled reservations for both rides. Conventional wisdom about Avatar’s cultural irrelevance notwithstanding, the park was swamped, and the first available time slot was hours away. I wandered into Windtraders gift shop, curious to see which elements from the preindustrial world of “Avatar” might lend themselves to merchandising. In one corner, I found T-shirts that said “Pandora” in the type style of a national park, riffing on the tourists-playing-tourists conceit. In another corner hung a wall of light-up “woodsprites,” the omniscient seeds from the Tree of Souls, which play a pivotal role in the film. Bioluminescence — in the form of light-up toys, black-light Christmas ornaments and glow-in-the-dark sweatshirts — was a key feature of “Avatar” merch. This choice made sense, in the way that light evokes the 3-D spectacle that real dimensionality cannot. Still, it was hardly a light saber.Leaving the gift shop, I strolled back through the mountains, dreading the hours I still had to kill until my scheduled ride reservations. I walked around in desperate search of a Na’vi. I studied a replica of the mech suit worn by the movie’s forgettable villain. Eventually, I just got in line. Waiting, by that point, seemed more entertaining than spending the rest of my evening in the park. As it turns out, a 3-D simulacrum of a 3-D movie kind of cancels itself out. Divorced from the dazzle of visual effects, I could see the aesthetic universe of “Avatar” for what it was: a glorified World Market sale section. The Na’vi alone were just a tiki-bar mishmash of traits that white people perceive as foreign: dreadlocks, beadwork, body mods, loincloths, feathers, cowrie shells. Compared with that of Hogwarts or Tatooine, the logic of their world seemed to lack imagination: What were the odds that, galaxies away, a society not only had two genders, but those genders were “male” and “female” — and the females were stacked?Six weeks later, on Sept. 23, Disney rereleased “Avatar” into theaters, in an ostensible effort to revive the intellectual property and prime the viewing public for “The Way of Water.” I went to see it with a group of 20 friends. In two rows of recliners, as the previews played, we took turns leaning over and asking, “Are we supposed to wear the 3-D glasses for this part?” The action did not leap from the screen so much as stumble forward in a seasick kind of way. I worried that I would not make it three hours, but from the first moment Jake Sully appeared, my skepticism slipped away, replaced with sudden, overwhelming understanding of why people once lost their minds for “Avatar.”Here is probably a good place to disclose that when I first started working on this article, I had never seen “Avatar.” The film came out my senior year of high school, when I was still committed to the thought that nothing popular could ever be good. (I have spent my life revising and re-​revising this position.) My plan was to see it for the first time in 3-D, as it was intended to be seen, but all my attempts to make this happen led nowhere. I ended up watching “Avatar” for the first time on a laptop screen in my hotel room in Orlando. Everything I had heard seemed accurate — the plot was rote; the dialogue, forgettable. The experience was so unremarkable it left me questioning my own humanity: Was the movie’s success a global mass delusion or was I lacking in some fundamental trait that would let me even understand why it was loved?Watching in 3-D was a different experience. As Jake and Neytiri darted through the forest, the special effects brought me into their world. The action did not just come forward as one frame, but instead wove me into the movement onscreen, the tendrils of plants and falling drops of water each reaching out from a different point in space. The Na’vi bodies appeared to have mass. It was hard to discern what was real or C.G.I., which led me to wonder, “Why even distinguish?” This, in turn, produced a twisted surge of delight at the prospect of man’s becoming God.The history of recorded images might be described as an incremental quest to master the building blocks of consciousness — first sight, then motion, then sound, then color. With “Avatar,” Cameron revealed that human ingenuity could marshal even more: physics, light, dimensionality; the ineffable sense of an object being real; the life force that makes a thing feel alive. As Sully soared through the floating mountain range, I thought of those apocryphal Victorians, ducking as a train appeared to rush out from the screen. I thought of all the geegaws and novelties and illusions of the latter part of the last millennium: the magic lantern show, electric lights, the Ferris wheel, color television and Pong. I didn’t know that I could still be dazzled.This is not to say that “Avatar” is good. The movie is basically a demo tape, each plot point reverse-engineered to show off some new feat of technology. The awe it inspires was not just about itself but rather the hope of new possibilities. It was easy to imagine someone in 2009 leaving the theater and asking: “What if we made more movies like this? What if we made good movies like this?” The year 2009 was a relatively optimistic one: Obama had just won on the audacity of “hope.” Climate change still felt far away. The forever wars were going to end. Surely we would fix whatever caused the recession. “Avatar” pointed toward a widening horizon — better effects, new cinematic worlds, new innovations in 3-D technology. It did not yet seem incongruous to wrap a project based in infinite progress around a story about the perils of infinite growth.Watching that day, I could still access these feelings but they were tied to a sense of melancholy, knowing that “The Way of Water” will emerge into an almost total deferment of that dream. Today, 3-D is niche (at best); digital effects are used to cut costs; home streaming is threatening the theater; and projects of ambitious world-building are overlooked in favor of stories with existing fanbases. We did not get here by pure chance: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated broadcast media, allowing companies to form megaconglomerates. In this world of mergers and acquisitions, the franchise blossomed into a highly efficacious product, allowing companies to maximize intellectual property across their numerous platforms. As the economy grew more financialized, and even movie studios began behaving more like banks — promising profits quarter over quarter — the franchise product became even more appealing. Because franchises have a ready audience, they effectively functioned as a way to manage risk, allowing companies to bet bigger and win bigger.Pulling a tactic from the franchise playbook, the screening ended with a post-credit sequence previewing “The Way of Water.” The movie takes place 15 years after the events of the first film (but still before the world of the theme park), following Sully, Neytiri and their children on some sort of partly undersea adventure. Most of what we know about the movie comes from a decade of tabloid oddities — it was shot in a 265,000-gallon ocean simulator! Sigourney Weaver plays a teenager! Kate Winslet trained to hold her breath for seven and a half minutes! The preview showed a young Na’vi splashing alongside a whale-like creature. It felt obvious that the clip had been chosen to show off Cameron’s latest innovation: underwater motion capture. The ocean was rendered so effectively it was hard to remember I was seeing something new.The story of “Avatar,” however hacky it may be, still suggests that humanity can save itself in the face of rapacious profiteering. This is something we have a moral imperative to keep believing. In today’s franchise movies, visions of the future are inherently constrained by the mandate to keep the franchise up and running — a project that forecloses any story line critiquing growth, consumerism or globalization. If the business of the franchise points toward an ever-widening horizon, the movies produced within its logic must do the opposite. Their vision of life is necessarily circular, always pointing back to itself.Jamie Lauren Keiles is a contributing writer for the magazine. They are currently working on a book about the rise of gender-neutral pronouns and nonbinary identity in America. More

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      James Cameron and the Cast of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Hold Their Breath

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      The original was the biggest hit ever, but the sequel still took a long time to come together. How will it resonate in a different era of moviegoing?James Cameron knew the question I really wanted to ask about his new sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”“‘What took you so long?’ Let’s not beat around the bush,” the director cracked.It’s a fair query, since after Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi adventure took in nearly $3 billion and became the highest-grossing film of all time, a follow-up that returned us to the beguiling alien world of Pandora was slow to materialize. Hollywood has changed so much in the interim that 20th Century Fox, the studio that financed “Avatar” and Cameron’s megahit “Titanic,” was acquired by Disney right after the sequel finally went into production in 2017.So what did take Cameron so long? On a recent video call with his cast, he confessed to blowing off the movie for a few years while indulging his passion for deep-sea exploration. After constructing a submarine designed to take him to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest-known place on this planet, Cameron accomplished that goal in March 2012, even as his “Avatar” actors fretted.“We kept thinking, ‘I hope he survives to make a new movie,’” Sigourney Weaver said.And even when Cameron convened a writers room to map out a second and third film, “I just wound up with more story than I bargained for,” he said. A tale that was initially conceived to complete a trilogy came to span four more movies, which all required a considerable amount of preproduction: Writing those new movies took four years, and designing their different biomes, cultures and wardrobes took an extra five.But “Avatar: The Way of Water” acknowledges that plenty of time has passed since the first film: In this installment, the soldier-turned-liberator Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his great love, the blue-skinned alien Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), are parents to a brood that includes three Na’vi children, a human boy who becomes part of their coterie and an orphaned, teenage Na’vi played by the 73-year-old Weaver through the magic of motion capture. (This is a different character than the one Weaver played in the first “Avatar,” and one hopes that any potential confusion is mitigated by the casting decision’s irresistible boldness.)Worthington, right, with the director James Cameron on set. “You’ve got to have something that the actors can get their teeth into” Cameron said of the screenplay.20th Century Studios“Avatar: The Way of Water” also adds new co-stars like Cameron’s “Titanic” lead Kate Winslet, and incorporated several deep-sea sequences that required the cast to film underwater while holding their breath for minutes on end. “You always walk away after an ‘Avatar’ journey feeling like you know more than you did before, and that’s exhilarating,” Saldaña said.Do they feel pressure to replicate the stunning success of the first “Avatar”? “You can’t be a slave to the outside forces,” Worthington said. “You’ve just got to go to work and be fearless and as true as you can.” Still, Cameron is a realist: He has already shot the third film and a little bit of the fourth, but he knows that his ability to finish a five-film franchise hinges on the box office performance of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” due in theaters Dec. 16.“If we make some money with two and three,” Cameron said, referring to the sequels, “it’s all mapped out. Scripts are already written, everything’s designed. So just add water.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.It’s not easy to follow up making the highest grossing movie ever, but James, you’ve now had to do it twice. What did you learn from the aftermath of “Titanic” that could be applied as you follow up “Avatar”?The Return of ‘Avatar’The director James Cameron takes us back to the world of Pandora for the sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water.”What to Know: The sequel opens on Dec. 16, 13 years after “Avatar” shattered box office records. If you remember little about the original movie, here is a refresher.Holding Their Breath: Cameron and the sequel’s cast discussed what it took to get the new “Avatar” made and to bring it to life in a changed world.Back to the Theater: To help reacquaint audiences with the 3-D filmmaking that dazzled audiences in 2009, the first movie was rereleased in theaters on Sept. 23.From the Archives: Cameron “hasn’t changed cinema, but with blue people and pink blooms he has confirmed its wonder,” our critic wrote after the release of “Avatar” in 2009.JAMES CAMERON You can’t think in those terms. If I brought that into every decision I make, then it’s like, “OK, is the color that’s going to go on the back of this Ilu going to make the difference of $10 million global gross?” I have to remind myself constantly to just have fun and enjoy the day because otherwise you’re competing with yourself.So is this a more fun James Cameron?SAM WORTHINGTON Yeah, absolutely.CAMERON Don’t all speak at once.What was the biggest difference between making the first and second film?ZOE SALDAÑA There were many more challenges. I was younger in the first installment, I didn’t have children. Now I have three children.Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri. She learned to hold her breath underwater. “I come from generations of island people,” and on colonized islands “you are taught to love the ocean as if it’s a goddess, but you fear it.”20th Century StudiosCAMERON And Zoe and Sam now play parents, 15 years later. In the first movie, Sam’s character leaps off his flying creature and essentially changes the course of history as a result of this crazy, almost suicidal leap of faith. And Zoe’s character leaps off a limb and assumes there’s going to be some nice big leaves down there that can cushion her fall. But when you’re a parent, you don’t think that way. So for me, as a parent of five kids, I’m saying, “What happens when those characters mature and realize that they have a responsibility outside their own survival?”Did having children change the way you take risks in your own life?CAMERON Yes, I was pretty wild in my misspent youth, and there are a lot of risks that I wouldn’t take now. I see some of that wildness in my own kids, and there are stories that are embargoed until they’ve turned a certain age. But it definitely colors your whole perspective to have children.I also want to do the thing that other people aren’t doing. When I look at these big, spectacular films — I’m looking at you, Marvel and DC — it doesn’t matter how old the characters are, they all act like they’re in college. They have relationships, but they really don’t. They never hang up their spurs because of their kids. The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Those characters don’t experience it, and I think that’s not the way to make movies.WORTHINGTON Jim wrote this family in a great way where not only are the stakes life and death, but the conflicts are quite domestic. You’re still having these arguments with kids that you have every day, like, “Pick up your clothes, eat your food,” even though the world is at war. To be honest, I’ve used a lot of what I learned from reacting to teenage boys in the movie and put it back into my real life, because I’ve got three boys — it’s a zoo at my house — and someone’s got to be the Great Santini and keep them in line.James, even before you had kids, a lot of your action films explored that parental dynamic. I’m thinking of Sarah Connor and her son, John, in “Terminator 2,” or Ripley and Newt in “Aliens.”CAMERON I think it’s a question of what interests one as a writer and director. The one thing I’ve learned is that you’ve got to have something that the actors can get their teeth into, something that they can draw on from their life experience. I knew as I was writing it that Sam and Zoe were new parents and that this stuff would resonate for them, but if you’re speaking to a young audience, let them feel validated that kids on another planet, 200 years from now, are going through the same crap they’re going through right now.Sigourney, how did you react when you learned you’d be playing a moody, motion-captured 14-year-old?SIGOURNEY WEAVER I remember when Jim finally made the decision, he said, “You can do this because you’re so immature. Nobody knows this but me, but I know that you’re just 14 at heart.” And I think Jim is about 16, so he’s not off by much! But it was incredibly exciting to set loose your inner 14-year-old and to refine it, because being 14 is not all fun. I think we all remember how excruciating it can sometimes be and how unjust things seem in the moment. If you’re playing someone as sensitive as a 14-year-old girl who’s been uprooted, that’s a whole world of adventure you get to have as this character.Sigourney Weaver plays the teenage Kiri, left, in the new film as her character Dr. Grace Augustine, right, died in the original.20th Century StudiosZoe, what was it like to play the mother figure to Sigourney Weaver?SALDAÑA Oh my God, there were moments I would go, “There’s that teenager that just hates me.” I was a daughter before I became a mother, and I do remember those moments with my mom when I felt completely confused and misunderstood.Movies like “Aquaman” and the upcoming live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” take place underwater but don’t actually submerge the actors. “Avatar: The Way of Water” does, and the actors had to learn how to hold their breath for several minutes to shoot some of its undersea sequences. What’s gained from doing it for real?CAMERON Oh, I don’t know, maybe that it looks good? Come on! You want it to look like the people are underwater, so they need to be underwater. It’s not some gigantic leap — if you were making a western, you’d be out learning how to ride a horse. I knew Sam was a surfer, but Sig and Zoe and the others weren’t particularly ocean-oriented folks. So I was very specific about what would be required, and we got the world’s best breath-hold specialists to talk them through it.SALDAÑA The first step is you fake it till you make it: You tell your boss, “Yeah, absolutely, I’m so excited,” and then it’s complete horror, like, “What am I going to do?” At best, you’re going to walk away with a brand-new aptitude, but I was scared. I come from generations of island people, and the one thing people don’t know about island life is that if you’re from islands that have been colonized, a great percentage of people don’t know how to swim. Through folklore, you are taught to love the ocean as if it’s a goddess, but you fear it.When it came to holding your breath, what were your personal bests?SALDAÑA I’m very competitive, but we had an Oscar-winning actress in our cast that did seven minutes.Was that Kate Winslet?WEAVER Jesus, yeah, seven minutes.Did you have any idea she was capable of that?CAMERON No, and she didn’t either! But Kate’s a demon for prep, so she latched onto the free diving as something that she could build her character around. Kate’s character is someone who grew up underwater as an ocean-adapted Na’vi — they’re so physically different from the forest Na’vi, that we’d almost classify them as a subspecies. So she had to be utterly calm underwater, and it turned out that she was a natural.SALDAÑA I got almost up to five minutes. That’s a big accomplishment, you guys.CAMERON Five minutes is huge. Sig did six and a half.WEAVER To the surprise of the teacher! He said to get rid of your mammalian instinct to go, “Oh my God, my face is in the water.” So you spend several minutes just putting your body back into that element and letting those land-person feelings dissolve.SALDAÑA I was just in Europe, swimming in the Mediterranean with my husband and our children, and I passed it down to my boys — they were swimming underwater. I could do that because I surrendered to something, but it wasn’t wonderful from the beginning, I have to say.CAMERON Now it all comes pouring out.WORTHINGTON The trauma!Since the first film came out, environmental issues have become even more urgent. How does “Avatar: The Way of Water” speak to that?WORTHINGTON In the first movie, Jake Sully says, “Open your eyes. Sooner or later, you have to wake up.” That’s what he does in the movie — he wakes up to the world and this other culture — and I think that “Avatar: The Way of Water” is about protecting all of that.Neytiri and Jake Sully in the sequel. Now that they are parents, Cameron said, “what happens when those characters mature and realize that they have a responsibility outside their own survival?”20th Century StudiosCAMERON In the first film, you wind up with a sense of moral outrage about the destruction of a single tree. We have something very similar that takes place in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and from what we’ve seen from test audiences, people feel that same sense of moral outrage. Does that translate in some tiny way when people come out of the theater into the way they think about the world, about nature, about our responsibility to the environment? Maybe, I don’t know.WEAVER You opened our eyes in the first one, but the second one, because it deals with the oceans and we’re having a crisis with the oceans, I feel it’s so much more transformative. If our goal is to become part of the World Surf League campaign and protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, I truly feel that this film is going to advance that goal. And it’s enhanced by the fact that the 3-D will absolutely put you on Pandora, in the water.CAMERON Jacques Cousteau said, “You won’t protect what you don’t love.” He knew that the way to get people to love the ocean is to show it to them with all its beauty and complexity and grandeur. We’re losing the whales, we’re losing the dolphins, we’re losing the sharks. We’re losing the coral reefs due to atmospheric [carbon dioxide] dissolving in the ocean. People will look back a hundred years from now and say, “We had all those things, and we squandered them.” So that’s in [the movie], but in a very organic way as part of the storytelling. The warning is between the lines.The first “Avatar” was a major breakthrough when it came to 3-D. What do you make of what happened to the format in the years after that?CAMERON I think the studios blew it. Just to save 20 percent of the authoring cost of the 3-D, they went with 3-D post-conversion, which takes it out of the hands of the filmmaker on the set and puts it into some postproduction process that yielded a poor result. I do think that the new “Avatar” film will rekindle an interest in natively authored 3-D, which is what I personally believe is the right way to do it. I say either do 3-D or don’t do 3-D, but don’t try to slap it on afterward to get the up-charge on the ticket.SALDAÑA And look, do you want to make a lot of money, or do you want to make something you’re truly proud of that stands the test of time?CAMERON Do I have to choose?SALDAÑA It’s unfortunate, but people chose the moneymaking machine, the post-conversion. And not every director is like Jim, with the level of commitment you put into it. That’s the difference between a project that is just a blockbuster hit and something that is truly special, and I wish more directors would understand that. If they just did a little course at the [Directors Guild of America] …CAMERON I’ll teach it! More

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      ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’: What to Know Before Watching

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      After 13 years, James Cameron’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is finally opening in December. Here’s everything you need to know.What can be accomplished in 13 years? Given that much time, J.K. Rowling published all seven of the Harry Potter books — and helped turn the first six of them into movies. Taylor Swift cranked out eight studio albums — and rerecorded two of them. The Yankees won the World Series eight times.James Cameron made one film.“Avatar: The Way of Water,” a roughly three-hour sci-fi epic, is a sequel to his 2009 “Avatar,” which shattered box office records and garnered a devoted fan base. (The three Academy Awards — for art direction, cinematography and visual effects — didn’t hurt either.) It’s set for a holiday-season release on Dec. 16 in theaters.If you remember very little about Pandora, here’s a refresher on the “Avatar” plot, the phenomenon it became and the stakes a sequel faces.OK, I just need to make sure before I get my hopes up yet again: This is really, finally, actually happening?Yes.Why did it take so long?The short answer is that the dazzling — and costly — array of visual effects means these films spend forever and a day in preproduction. Also, a majority of the sequel was filmed underwater, and new motion-capture technology had to be developed to accomplish the feat.Thirteen years is a long time, but not long enough for me to have seen the original “Avatar.” Can I watch “The Way of Water” anyway?Well, yes, but it’d be like diving into the “Star Wars” franchise with “The Empire Strikes Back.” How did Han Solo get in that carbonite? And what’s the deal with him and Princess Leia?OK, got it, not optional. So where can I watch “Avatar”?You’ll no longer be able to find it on Disney+ after it was quietly removed from the streaming service in August. You can, however, see “Avatar” in theaters beginning Sept. 23, when Disney will rerelease it with remastered audio and picture.Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña in a scene from the original.20th Century FoxI don’t have time to rewatch a nearly three-hour film! Hit me with the highlights.It’s the middle of the 22nd century and humans have depleted Earth’s natural resources, so they are now colonizing a moon known as Pandora, which is home to both the valuable mineral unobtanium and a tribe of 10-foot-tall indigenous blue creatures known as Na’vi, who look like a mash-up of the Blue Man Group, centaurs, professional basketball players and armed supermodels. A group of specially trained humans inhabit genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, known as avatars, to interact with the tribe while their human bodies remain in a remote location.The protagonist is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-Marine who replaces his identical twin brother in the Avatar Program after his death. Power struggles ensue within the program about what is worth sacrificing to obtain the unobtanium, as well as the value of Na’vi life; within the forest, as Jake tries to convince the Na’vi to accept him as one of their own; and within Jake himself. He grapples with the ethics of what he is doing, which is complicated by the fact that he has fallen for one of the Na’vi women, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).After Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of the security force for the group mining the unobtanium, destroys the Na’vi’s gathering place, Hometree, and kills many of them, Jake confronts him in his Na’vi form. Quaritch almost kills Jake before Neytiri fatally shoots the colonel with two arrows to the chest. Jake, in love with Neytiri and having gained the trust of the Na’vi, chooses to transfer to his avatar form permanently. The film’s closing shot is of his eyes, waking up on Pandora.The visual effects in the film were a big deal, right?Oh, yes. Reviewers focused as much — if not more — on the images as on the plot, both explaining and lauding the use of performance capture, which was then a newfangled innovation that had been most notably used for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films.Wasn’t “Avatar” released in 3-D?Yes, it was shot with a 3-D camera system that gave Cameron an augmented-reality view in real time by integrating the live actors with computer-generated environments in the viewfinder. “Avatar” was one of the films that restarted a fad of 3-D cinematic releases, though you may not have actually seen it in 3-D: Many theaters didn’t yet have 3-D projection systems.What about the film itself? Was it any good?It brought in more than $2.8 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, not adjusted for inflation. Reviewing the film for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis named it a Critic’s Pick, calling it “glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.”Both critics and audiences lauded the visuals and immersive world-building, but the story itself — which was familiar to anyone who had seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai” — won far less acclaim, with a large portion of reviewers dismissing it as generic or unoriginal. In her review, Dargis also criticized Cameron’s writing, particularly the dialogue, which she noted veered into “comically broad” territory at times (case in point: “Yeah, who’s bad?” Jake taunts a rhinolike creature).Jake Sully (Worthington) is back for the sequel, in which he’s now a father. 20th Century StudiosIs Cameron writing the sequel, too?Yes, though while he had sole script credit on “Avatar,” he co-wrote “The Way of Water” with Josh Friedman, who wrote the 2005 “War of the Worlds” adaptation that was directed by Steven Spielberg, and is co-writing the forthcoming “Star Trek 4” film.What do we know about “The Way of Water” so far?Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing “Titanic,” is going back to the sea with the sequel, which is — as you may have guessed from the title — set primarily underwater. It takes place more than a decade after the events of the first film and focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri and their preteen children. It also introduces a new tribe of reef-dwelling Na’vi known as the Metkayina.Is Zoe Saldaña back?Saldaña, who became a fan favorite for her performance as Neytiri and went on to play the green-skinned Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, is back for “The Way of Water,” along with Worthington, Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and CCH Pounder. Yes, some of their characters are apparently dead, and no, we haven’t figured out how that works yet.They’ll be joined by prominent newcomers, including Kate Winslet (the Na’vi leader Ronal), Cliff Curtis (Tonowari, a leader of the Metkayina clan), Edie Falco (a military officer) and Jemaine Clement (a marine biologist).Will the sequel be shown in 3-D?Yes, but good news for glasses-wearers: You won’t need two sets to take in the film; a newer laser system eliminates the need for special glasses. (Though many theaters, as was the case the first time around, do not yet have the necessary equipment.)Am I going to have to wait 13 more years for “Avatar 3”?Cameron has signed on to make three more sequels, and they’re currently set for release in 2024, 2026 and 2028.But maybe pencil in 2035, 2048 and 2061, just in case. More